Behind every successful organization, there is an efficient sales team. 

The efficiency of a sales team is driven by how motivated the individual reps are. 

Now the easiest way to motivate a sales team is by offering them earned commissions. When these commissions are tied to a quota, your sales team’s motivation is closely aligned to the business.

In this post, let us understand what a sales quota is, its definition, key objectives, types, and significance.

What is a sales quota? 

A sales quota is a quantitative goal set by sales managers to measure salespeople’s performance, which, in turn, will help determine their compensation. Sales quota can also be set for an entire team, a territory, and a department. It is also set for a particular period, such as a month, quarter, or year. A smart sales manager ensures that the sales quota is set in such a way that it does not seem too high (making it unachievable) or too low (making the reps complacent). 

What are the objectives of a sales quota? 

Here are the key objectives of a sales quota – 

• To stimulate sales effort and improve revenue for the organization.
• To determine a sales rep’s compensation and bonus and ensure that the entire process is done transparently.
• To ensure that the salesperson or the sales team adheres to the agreed-upon business metrics.
• To gather vital information as to where the organization is currently in relation to its goals.
• To identify the strengths and weaknesses of sales teams.
• To ensure that the team’s performance is in sync with the market.

What are the different types of quotas? 

#1 Revenue Quota

This is probably the most basic type of sales quota and also the most common one followed by businesses. In this, the sales reps or the teams must sell to generate a certain amount of revenue within a specific time frame. It is usually set for a month or a quarter. 

Example: Decan is a sales representative who has been set a monthly target of $20,000. His average sale is usually $4,000. So he needs to sell to at least 5 customers to meet his monthly sales quota.

When to use this quota: 

• Revenue growth is your primary goal.
• You have a clear buyer persona.
• Your reps already have an optimal activity performance.

#2 Activity Quota

This type of sales quota revolves around sales-oriented tasks that the reps must do in a particular time frame. For instance, it can be making a set number of phone calls in a month or sending a fixed number of emails in a quarter. This type of quota has objectives ranging from client acquisition to booking meetings. It is usually set for junior SDRs and reps in their early stages of sales careers, where activities are highly correlated to their success.

Example: Adele is a sales representative who has been set a monthly target of 300 calls. So she has to make at least 10 calls per day, regardless of how many sales she makes.

When to use this quota:

• When you want to drive reps’ contribution to your organization’s growth, regardless of the outcome.
• When you want to coach inexperienced or struggling reps without punishing them monetarily. 

#3 Volume Quota

This type of sales quota focuses on the number of products sold instead of the revenue or dollar value of the sale. This quota can be further split into product categories, business units, location, etc. 

Example: Mark is a sales representative who has been set a quarterly selling volume of 25 cars. The showroom has cars ranging from $20,000 to $50,000. Mark has the liberty to sell any of these cars without worrying about the revenue or margin. 

When to use this quota:

• When you are vying for market penetration.
• When you want to maximize value from sales.

#4 Profit Quota

This is almost similar to the revenue quota. The main difference is – the ‘revenue’ is replaced with profit as a criterion. This quota requires the sales reps to generate a certain amount of profit for the company by selling products (or services) at a certain price or selling only those with a high margin. This type of quota is ideal if your business has multiple price points for the same product or has multiple products with varying price points.

Example: David is a sales representative who has been asked to sell goods worth $5000. Apart from the revenue quota, he has also been set a profit quota that encourages him to sell only high-margin goods.

When to use this quota:

• When you have a high customer-acquisition cost.
• When you want to see how each sale is realistically contributing towards your business growth 

#5 Forecast Quota

This type of quota is set based on predictions made from past results. While setting this type of quota, the manager must not only know past revenue details but must be able to decipher the different influences on those revenues, such as where they came from (channel) and how they affected the sales, etc. This type of quota is usually assigned to a team, business unit, or territory. 

Example: Organization ABC clocked a revenue of $50,000 in Q4 last year. They want to boost their revenues by 10% this quarter. So the team has been asked to generate $55,000 this quarter.

When to use this quota:

• When you have a lot of sales data to deploy effectively
• When you are stepping into a new domain
• When you are launching a new product.

#6 Combination Quota

As the name suggests, a combination sales quota is a combination of multiple sales quotas. This type of sales quota offers reps several small, achievable milestones along with a sales roadmap for long-term success. This not only makes it easy to attain the sales quota but also aids in developing the reps’ diverse talents.

Example: Andrew, a sales representative, has been asked to make at least 200 calls in the upcoming month and sell at least 10 products.

When to use this quota:

• When you want to develop the diverse talents of your reps.
• When you are not sure about which sales quota will work best for your team. 

Tracking of sales quotas

Most organizations make the mistake of setting up a sales quota and completely forgetting about it later. Sales managers must realize that it is also their responsibility to track the sales quota consistently and find ways to improve the processes and remove any bottlenecks if present. 

Managers must also constantly communicate how close or far the reps are from attaining their individual sales quota. Your reps must have utmost clarity and accurate information all the time to know their progress in quota attainment. 

If they are way ahead of the expected quota, reward them with a bonus. This will encourage them to put in even more effort. If they are falling behind, train them or give them the necessary assistance to catch up with the rest. 

One of the most common metrics that help in tracking sales quota is Quota Attainment. Its formula is given by – 

Quota Attainment = Actual Sales/ Target Sales

This metric gives you insights into the best-performing reps and how attainable the quotas are. For instance, if you have multiple reps or teams with low quota attainment, then it means you have set unrealistic goals. Similarly, if the value is quite high for many sales reps, it means your goals are very easy to attain.

How does Rafiki help with quota attainment? 

The biggest enemy of quota attainment is unseen risk signals. Popular risk signals include a lack of decision-makers in the deal, low email or call velocity, no feedback, lack of discussion about the pricing, and competitor mentions. These are all indicators of likely lost deals. When you get a clear view of these signals, you can take appropriate actions, which, in turn, can help produce a well-oiled sales machine.  

A tool like Gong or Chorus can identify these deal risks and can use them in deal forecasting and quota quantification. However, these tools cost hundreds of dollars per month and way beyond the budget of most small and medium-sized businesses. 
Enter Rafiki, the AI-powered sales intelligence tool that has been carefully designed (and of course priced) for all SMBs out there. Not only Rafiki costs ways less, but also offers all the key features provided by the above pricey tools plus some customized features required to boost your quota attainment.

Click here to sign up for a free trial.

It’s never easy to teach sales. The sheer complexity of the field and the tightly intertwined processes make it a daunting task to share knowledge. Thankfully, there are many pearls of wisdom scattered here and there, left by many successful salespeople across the globe. And all those tiny bits of knowledge have been compiled in the form of several best-selling books on sales. 

In this post, let’s look at 10 best sales books that will help reps win more. 

10 Best Sales Books for B2B Sales Reps to Win More!

#1 Way of the Wolf – Jordan Belfort

Authored by Jordan Belfort, the Way of Wolf is rightly considered the ‘Bible of Sales’. In this book, the author has covered the art of persuasion and the steps to convince prospects to purchase from you. He has talked about a very important aspect of selling – how to strike an effective conversation with your prospects. 

Key Takeaways from the book:

• A perfect sale is only made when it is presented neatly to the customers. It is important to pitch your product subtly yet powerfully. 
• A sale can be made only when the rep has an emotional connect with the prospect. 
• The way you communicate with the prospects dictates how the prospects perceive you. And it’s not limited to the first 5 seconds but to the entire conversation.

Favorite quote from the book:

“You do not want to try to resolve their pain at this point. In fact, if anything, you want to amplify that pain.” 

Fun fact: This book was immortalized by the popular movie “Wolf of the Wall Street” starring Leanardo Decaprio.

#2 Sell or be sold – Grant Cardone

A must-read for all sales folks, this book is a warehouse of sales tricks and is one of the best sales books. The author has highlighted the importance of being careful and proactive when it comes to selling a product or service. The author himself is a notable sales trainer, and this book is a summary of all his personal experiences. 

Key Takeaways:

• You must be 100% sold on your product. When you yourself are not convinced about the value of the product, you cannot convince others. 
• Price is never a concern for your buyers. Similarly, a dull economy can never be a reason for a failed sale. 
• There is no shortcut to becoming a successful sales rep. You have to sell and learn from each sale.

Favorite quote from the book 

“The amount of success is limited by the amount of action you take” 

#3 Spin Selling – Neil Rackham

Most salespeople might already know about SPIN selling. However, not many know that this methodology was derived from the book ‘SPIN Selling’ by Neil Rackham. He introduced the concept of SPIN selling in the form of a series of questions that need to be asked to a prospect before moving on with a sale. The book is a compilation of case studies, success stories, and experimental observations from over 35,000 sales calls.

Key Takeaways:

• The best way to stop objections from coming up in the first place is by asking implication questions. How is their pain point making them lose time, money, effort, etc.
• Questions are a much more effective tool than pressure in the world of sales.
• While talking to prospects, keep repeating the main benefits of your product and then suggest the next logical step for them to take.

Favorite quote from the book :

“The building of perceived value is probably the single most important selling skill in larger sales.” 

#4 To Sell is Human – Daniel Pink

In this book, Daniel Pink points out that everyone born in this world is a salesperson, either directly or indirectly. We are constantly selling ourselves and our ideas daily, both at work and at home. The author talks about the ABC of sales viz. Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity. He also takes us through the various strategies of selling, how the field has evolved over the years, and what it takes to become a successful seller, all with the help of illustrations, real-life incidents, and facts. 

Key Takeaways:

• Sales is not about inducing pressure in the minds of the prospects but making their lives better.
• Successful salespeople are good listeners. They always try to understand the buyer’s perspective before selling.
• Sales is always about catching tiny little signals during your conversations with the prospects. Particularly, pay attention to why prospects are saying ‘No’, so that you can handle the objections better.

Favorite quote from the book :

“To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.”

#5 Fanatical Prospecting – Jeb Blount

This book by Jeb Blount primarily focuses on the art of prospecting. He says that reps must be aggressive and relentless in their efforts to become successful B2B sales experts. According to Blount, finding good prospects is more important than being an expert in closing deals. Because having good prospects automatically gets your work done. 

Key Takeaways:

• An empty sales pipeline is the biggest reason for reps to not succeed in sales An empty sales pipeline is the result of the reps’ inability to prospect consistently.
• There are three laws that every salesperson must follow –
  • Prospects are available everywhere.
  • Every ‘No’ takes you closer to a ‘Yes’
  • Continue marching towards the goal until it is reached.

Favorite quote from the book :

“There is no easy button in sales. Prospecting is hard, emotionally draining work, and it is the price you have to pay to earn a high income.” 

#6 The Challenger Sale – Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson

In this book, the author defines a Challenger as someone who is able to identify the customer’s problem and offer their product as the best solution tactfully. Like SPIN, the Challenger sales methodology is one of the oldest methodologies still in existence. It is used as a tool to achieve greater conversions by taking control of the sales process.

Key Takeaways:

• Probe the customer with questions to find out more information about themselves, their business, and their pain points and to get them to think that there is no better alternative than your product. 
• Challengers are made, not born. It’s the skills they gain over the years that matter.
• Building a Challenger sales force is a long journey. You cannot build such a competent workforce in a day.

Favorite quote from the book:

“After all, there’s usually little stopping your competition from discounting their way to a win. In that game, loyalty is essentially irrelevant, as customers aren’t looking for a partner, they’re looking for a bargain.” 

#7 How I raised myself from failure to success in selling – Frank Bettger

The author, Frank Bettger, takes us through the numerous failures he has come across during his lifetime as a salesperson. According to this book, a common salesperson tends to give up after a few tries and move on. But a successful one never gives up and always tries to get to the top even after failing many times. Resilience, patience, and hard work are some of the key characteristics of such a salesperson.

Key Takeaways:

• Focus on making your . 
• Know A-Z about your business and stay abreast with all the latest happenings. This will give you the confidence to win over the prospects.
• Listen with keen ears to the pain points of the prospects. And always try to take the focus away from you during a sales conversation. It’s always them.

Favorite quote from the book:

“Failures mean nothing at all if success comes eventually. And that’s a thought that should cheer you up and help you keep on keeping on when the going seems hard. Keep going! Each week, each month, you are improving. One day soon, you will find a way to do the thing that today looks impossible.” 

#8 The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes

In this book, the author explains that to be a successful B2B salesperson, one must have 4 characteristics imbibed in them – prospecting, presenting, closing, and service. These four characteristics help a salesperson find the right prospect, pitch their product in the most presentable manner, and close the deal. He has filled the book with tips, tricks, and strategies that are useful for both newbie salespeople and experienced ones.

Key Takeaways:

• Continuously train your sales staff. This is the best way to make them a sales machine.
• A sales machine never sells just the product. They sell the brand and the history of the store.
• Try to reach the decision-maker as early as possible. It is particularly important in large companies where you will be going on a wild goose chase otherwise.

Favorite quote from the book:

“Use market data, not product data. Set the buying criteria in your favor. Find the “smoking gun,” the one thing that undeniably positions you over everyone else. Make sure you hit their pain points. Include your own pitch for your product or service only after you have covered the education thoroughly.” 

#9 Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss

Negotiating is one of the key skills of a salesperson, and this entire book revolves around it. It has been a guidebook for many salespeople in recent years. According to it, the key to becoming a successful negotiator is to empathize with the prospect, get a hold of their perspective and find a common ground to negotiate.

Key Takeaways:

• In every negotiation scenario, there are at least two groups. The easiest way to reach a positive climax is by understanding what each party wants from the other.
• Your prospects want to be understood. They want you to make the effort to understand what can help them currently to succeed in their business. 
• Always find questions or topics that the prospect will be happy to answer. It’s the best path to understand their point of view and what they think about their pain points.

Favorite quote from the book:

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”

#10 The Greatest Salesman in the World – OG Mandino

OG Mandino’s book “The Greatest Salesman in the World” is fictitious yet an eye-opener for many salespeople. The book follows the story of a young guy Hamid who grew up in a small village in the Middle East and later moved to the United States and made a living by selling paper products. The story captures the entire life story of Hamid, including how he had an idea, how he started selling, how he failed and learnt from his mistakes, and how he eventually became the ‘the greatest salesman in the world’.

Key Takeaways:

• In any selling process, you must follow time-tested principles. Follow those principles and make them into habits. 
• Be persistent. No matter how many times you fail, it is important to look at each failure as a stepping stone to success and an opportunity to learn something new.
• It’s impossible to absorb all the feelings of customers during conversations. Humans are complex creatures. You, as a salesperson, have to transform yourself into a positive source of empathy and hear them out. This way, you can convert them into customers.

Favorite quote from the book:

“Wealth, my son, should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.” 

Wrapping Up

And those are the best sales books every B2B sales rep must read to overcome obstacles and become successful in their career. All these books educate, enlighten, and leave you with a lot more knowledge about selling than you will have before reading them. Many of these books can even become your mentors, as you can keep revisiting them whenever you encounter an issue in your sales career.

If you are a sales manager or a leader, you can also use sales coaching software to improve the knowledge of your reps and make them better at selling. Rafiki is currently the #1 sales coaching software in 2022. It offers advanced solutions that can help new B2B reps win more.

Startups evolve rapidly. New founders are left with no choice but to adapt quickly.

And one major consequence of this – many strategies related to startups fail to stand the test of time.

But there are some exceptions.

Certain time-tested pearls of wisdom related to startups are still available today in the form of books.

To borrow a popular quote – “It’s no secret that to learn more, one has to read more.”

Yes, the best place to kickstart your learning about the startup ecosystem is ‘books.’ This collection of thoughts is a treasure trove of knowledge that teaches you everything and anything from managing time to managing your employees.

We also understand that as a startup founder, you will not have the luxury to search for books, read reviews, and zero in on these books.

So to cut you some slack, we have come up with 5 must-read books for every startup founder out there to have a successful run in the startup world.

#1 Zero to One

This book offers a deep glimpse of how startup ventures are meant to be. Authored by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and an early investor in Facebook, this book is full of challenging ideas backed by solid justifications that are apt for various startup scenarios.  

While this book is ideal for those building tech startups, there are a bunch of brilliant ideas that could contribute to your growth as a startup founder, irrespective of the domain.

# 2 The lean startup

Authored by Eric Ries and a bestseller on Amazon, this book not only showcases how to operate your startup but also how to use minimal resources to do it. Most startups do not have adequate capital to fund their ventures in the initial days. This is where the Lean Startup comes in handy. 

This book is replete with ideas such as favoring experimentation over planning, customer feedback over assumptions, and iterative design over the traditional waterfall model. Many of the ideas proposed by this book, such as Minimum Viable Product and prioritizing customer feedback, have already made a mark in most modern startups. 

#3 Blue Ocean strategy

This book is perfect for three kinds of startup founders –

• The ones who love to adopt a customer-centric approach
• Those who want to avoid competition when they set afoot in the startup world. 
• Those who are already established but need to distinguish themselves from their rival brands

Yes, you guessed it right, basically this book is for every startup founder out there. This book encourages startup founders to stay out of the red ocean of competition by tapping into uncontested market spaces. This involves creating and capturing new demands, redefining market boundaries, etc.

The crux of the blue ocean strategy is value and innovation. This is not just about technology innovation or being the first to enter the market in a new category. Instead, it is all about redefining the problem, crossing market boundaries, and serving exceptional value to the buyers.

#4 Hooked

Questions like these race through our minds more often than not – 

• How do some products capture widespread attention, while others fail?
• What makes us like some products and not others?
• Why do certain technologies hook us? 

The book Hooked has all the answers for you. Authored by Nir Ayal, this book is the end product of years of research, consulting, practical knowledge, and experience of the author. The book is for marketers, designers, product managers, and mainly startup founders who are keen to understand how products influence human behavior.

#5 Start with why

This book revolves around a simple but powerful quote – “People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do.” When you know why you do something, you have a sense of belonging, and customers resonate with that. This is a very important lesson for all newbie startup founders out there. The book tells you to communicate why, then follow it with how, and finally reveal what you actually do. 

Winding up…

The above-suggested books can greatly contribute to your startup growth. As a founder, your job is to pick valuable lessons from these books and apply them to your startup. 

Initially, all of your strategies come from customer feedback. As founders, you have to be on the ground with your customers helping them all the way through.  These details are critical to your business, but what if a tool records and helps you turn those insights into actions that have a significant business impact – that too with minimal intervention. That’s Rafiki for you.

Rafiki records, transcribes, and analyses all your customer-facing meetings. The conversation intelligence platform creates automatic notes and allows your team to create meeting video snippets that they can use both internally and externally for following up on action items. Apart from creating a treasure trove of knowledge for your business, Rafiki also ensures that your meetings convert to closed deals by helping you deliver a seamless buying experience for your customers.

From automatically creating meeting notes to helping you develop a deal-winning strategy, Rafiki is the only tool that ensures all your customer conversations convert to closed deals. Want to know more? Book a free consultation with our product experts now.

P.S: Unlike other conversation intelligence solutions, Rafiki has no user minimums. It even has a metered pricing option, and special prices for startups.

Let me begin this post with an encouraging fact for all SaaS startup enthusiasts – The industry is growing at a staggering rate of 18% year on year.
The growth of SaaS startups in the last decade is nothing short of a fairy tale. The top contributors to this meteoric rise were a customer-centric approach, a strong partner network, and product-led growth.

Then came the pandemic that brought a transformational opportunity for various SaaS startups to extend boundaries beyond their traditional audiences. This opportunity catalyzed the growth even more! 

However, such unprecedented growth comes with its own set of challenges. For starters, the competition is stiff among SaaS startups, making it an uphill climb for new ones to capitalize on the overall industry growth.

The only way for such new SaaS startups to rise above their competition is to improve their productivity and efficiency. And what better way to improve it than using various tools available in the market. This post recommends the top-10 tools a SaaS startup must own today for increased productivity.

1. No-code website builders such as Webflow

Your website acts as a conversion engine that either encourages or discourages a purchase from your company. There is massive pressure on your shoulders to build a professional website for your business. However, it is not easy without the help of some professional web development, which can be out of budget for most early-stage SaaS startups.

Using Webflow, you can transform your whole web development process and make it seamless. The best part? Your website can be managed by your sales team or design team without any prior coding knowledge, giving you better productivity. 

2. Tracking tools such as HotJar or PageSense

Tracking tools help you get valuable information about your visitors. These tools track key metrics related to user behavior on your site. The insights generated can help you understand user needs better and offer them a personalized experience. Gone are the days when you shot arrows in the dark, gave visitors a one-size-fits-all solution, and expected them to buy your product without questions. Today, you need the help of tracking tools such as HotJar or PageSense to offer users exactly what they want, exactly where they look for it and turn them into loyal customers.

3. Video conferencing tools such as Zoom or Google Meet

Video conferencing platforms helped businesses to get going or stay operational despite hurdles like pandemics in the past. Today it has become a core component of everyday communication for most startups. Modern-day video conferencing tools like Zoom offer several features, including app and screen sharing facilities for running meetings seamlessly from the comfort of our homes. From whiteboard notes to meeting recordings, you can store, retrieve or analyze any Zoom meeting without hassles. 

4. Productivity Suites such as G-Suite or Zoho One

Imagine how good it will be if you have a single application that lets you create, communicate, and share information. A productivity suite like G-suite or Zoho One does it for you. Now named Google Workspace, it comprises robust apps like Gmail, Drive, Meet, Calendar, and Docs that meet various purposes and let you manage your everyday workflow. 

5. Social Media tools such as Hootsuite

When you are a brand new SaaS business, leads and customers are hard to attract even if your product is good. Cold outreach can take time and is not super-reliable. Hence, the easiest way to deepen your relationships with your stakeholders or prospects is by using social media. Branding tools such as Hootsuite help your business build a deeply engaging social media presence.

From social listening on platforms to engaging in AI-powered social e-commerce, you can do them all with such tools. Hootsuite has a scalable platform and strong industry partnerships. It can uncover deep insights about your target audience and get you one step closer to converting them.

6. CRM such as HubSpot, Zoho, or Freshsales

A CRM is a bridge between your business and the customers. It can be difficult for your sales team to juggle multiple tools for connecting with the customers. But having a robust CRM like HubSpot, Zoho, or Freshsales can help build meaningful conversations with your customers through contextual engagement before demos, after which tools such as Rafiki take over. You can drive leads to close and manage different pipelines seamlessly via a CRM and conversation intelligence integration. Choosing tools that support this integration is critical as it would be the gold mine of information for your startup to understand gaps across product, pitch, and customer expectations.

7. Omnichannel engagement tools like Intercom

A survey states that about 88% of customers expect an online self-service portal from a business. Support articles such as FAQs, product manuals, and chat assistance are table stakes and not a luxury anymore. To prepare a support article base, aka knowledge base articles, you can use tools such as Intercom. Apart from enabling the curation and publication of help articles, Intercom also doubles up as an omnichannel customer engagement platform. Chats, emails, Help articles, in-product banners, and product tours are some of its features. Intercom even offers exclusive pricing plans for startups to help you get started.

8. Time management tools like Hubstaff

If you are looking to eliminate inefficiencies and incorporate streamlined time management for your projects, then Hubstaff is the tool. Hubstaff helps manage time for each project by identifying roadblocks, managing invoices, creating detailed reports, and much more. It integrates with 30+ popular software, including Github, Asana, Trello, and Paypal, making your work-life simple.

9. Collaboration tools like Slack

Collaborating with teams and with clients has to be quick, seamless, and reliable for a business to run in good health. Tools like Slack allows you to automate routine actions and communications so that your team can focus on their primary objectives without any problems. Slack comes with an array of features that lets you share and manage files, create polls, set reminders, etc.

10. Conversation intelligence tools such as Gong or Rafiki

In a startup, most of the core team’s time gets spent on redundant tasks such as recording customer interactions, taking notes, analyzing them for product insights, feeding the information to CRM, and so on. 

What if this time gets spent on pitching to leads and closing deals and not on manual tasks like note-taking that can easily be automated? That is precisely what Rafiki or Gong helps you do. While Gong focuses on enterprise customers, Rafiki is more suited for SMBs.

Rafiki is a conversation intelligence platform that integrates with your CRM (Not just Salesforce or HubSpot), Google calendar, GMeet, and Zoom, to name a few. It records and transcribes your meetings, captures key topics and moments from your meeting conversations, and even generates automatic notes sorted by topics to get you started.

While traditional conversation intelligence solutions stop with analyzing meetings, Rafik is the only solution that allows you to contextually follow up with your prospects and ensure your deals close. 

High-growth teams at Hippo-Video, Businessfirst.io, and NoBroker trust Rafiki’s insights for their sales productivity. No minimum license mandates, one-click integration with SMB-focused CRMs such as Zoho, Freshsales, Pipedrive, and affordable pricing make Rafiki the default choice for SaaS startups.

Built for SMBs, Rafiki is highly affordable, easy to use, set up, and offers a free trial with all the features of an enterprise-grade tool for a fraction of the cost. It even has exclusive follow-up and tracking features that help increase the prospect engagement rate post-demos that no other platform offers. 

Winding-up

The above list of tools will help you become more efficient and help you materialize your startup vision on the ground. If you are a SaaS startup starting anew or have a limited budget, then G-Suite, Webflow, A CRM, Rafiki, and Zoom should be a part of your tool stack to navigate the initial days. The remaining tools can follow once you have customers and some revenue.

So far, we have seen the five steps in a typical sales process. Our first blog captured the initial steps that a quintessential sales representative has to go through to lay the foundation of his/her sales process, viz. prospecting, preparation and approach. This was followed by another post on subsequent steps that they have to take while actually interacting with the prospects – presentation and handling objections. 

Now, this post is all about the closure, i.e., what happens during the actual purchase and what happens after that. Read on…

Closing

Though it comes at the end, it is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of the multi-step sales process. In this stage, you carefully assess your client’s interest to invest in your service or product. You also have to understand their propensity to purchase by evaluating the client’s budget, requirements, and ability to utilize your service or product correctly to give them positive results. 

Once you have done that, it’s time to make your finishing move. This is when you ask your client their decision on how they would like to move forward doing business with you. If all’s well, they will sign the contract with you. 

Now, when it comes to closing, there are three major techniques that you can embrace. Here are they – 

Alternative Close Choice

This is probably the most popular one and is used by most businesses. In this,  you give the client a perception that everyone is okay with your terms and is happy to close the deal. You can do so by creating an impression that the sale is almost complete and then offering the prospect two options, both of which should lead to a sale.

For Example: Would you like to pay the whole fee upfront or do you like to do that in installments? 

Extra Inducement Close

This is something that a lot of salespeople have in the buffer; if the prospect looks promising and seems like a great long-term partner, then this technique would be ideal for you. In this technique, the salesperson offers the prospect something extra for free – this could be offering the product or service free for 2-3 months or a substantial discount for the same period.

Standing room only close

Create a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) effect in the minds of the prospects. You can do so by letting them know that you only have a few more spots left this month at a special price.

Follow Up

If you are on this step, then congratulations are in order as you have successfully closed a deal. This is indeed a great achievement, but your job as a sales rep doesn’t end here. You need to regularly follow up with the customer. This will lead to –

• Customer satisfaction
• Ability to acquire new prospects by word of mouth
• Customer retention 

Send a thank-you note, and be in constant touch with the customer even if it seems like they are never going to leave you. Ask them if the product is helpful for them and it is meeting their needs. Also, find out if they need any help related to the product. 

You can also send them informative content like blogs, newsletters, and new additions regarding product updates and services. This will keep the customer informed and connected with your business.

Pro tip: Create a feedback loop for the customers where they share their experience about using your product. Conduct email surveys once a month with an array of open-ended questions to understand their sentiment about your product. 

Bonus Step: Track the sales process

Your sales process has to be constantly tracked. You need to ensure that it doesn’t deviate from the intended path. The chances are pretty high for it to go wayward as everything is dynamic in the world of sales. This is where sales leaders should take control of the narrative. They should identify a pattern of key competitor mentions, deal risks, common objections, etc., and use this knowledge to fine-tune the sales process. 

In other words, you need to embrace deal analytics and sales intelligence. Our Sales expert webinar’s recording tells you how to achieve that. It will also coach your sales reps to close more deals, letting you scale up your SMB in no time.

Do not miss this chance to learn from our experts and learn everything about the sales process. Wanted to attend future sessions? Follow our Linkedin for instant updates about our upcoming sessions.